Adventures, old and new

Image via Wikipedia

I'm such a geek, and so taken with Apture, that I've just gone back through my (old) September dispatches from London and added all kinds of rich content goodness to them -- links, photos, maps and a video or two. Some of my loyal readers are just as geeky as I am and like this sort of thing, so I encourage you to go back and re-read the posts while clicking on the Apture links for all the extras. If you have questions about any of the places I saw, or want more info about anything, leave me a comment and I'll search out some more content for you.

And now for the new: I've just purchased a ticket to Santa Fe, New Mexico for five days in May for the unbeatable price of $196 round trip (airfare Hartford/Albuquerque; the shuttle up to Santa Fe will be another $25). Now, I'm doing online research on cheap places to stay, reading reviews and watching some clunky homemade videos of various B&B offerings. It's been ten or twelve years since my one and only previous trip to Santa Fe, and that was for a conference so I really didn't have an opportunity to explore much back then. This visit may have a daytrip up to Taos and will definitely involve lots of photo-taking. More info to follow as I make a spreadsheet of the things I want to do and see. Meanwhile, winter drags on like an indeterminant sentence. It's good to have something to look forward to -- especially something involving sunshine and warm weather.

I'm Captured by Apture

I know I say this whenever I find some new gadget or gizmo, but this one really is the best thing for blogs since sliced bread. It's called Apture, and like Zemanta, it helps you to add links to your blog posts. But Apture takes things beyond where Zemanta goes -- with Apture, you can link to media files and point to more than one place with your link. It creates pop-up boxes -- yes, we all hate pop-up boxes, but stay with me here -- that show you a Wikipedia article, map, video, photo, or all of those things for one target.

I'm not very good at explaining this, so you'll have to see it in action. Go to one of my posts below. You'll notice that some of the links have a wee icon (book, camera, movie film, etc.) to the left of the link. Those are Apture links. Mouse over the link, but don't click. A box will open up and you'll see the linked item without ever leaving my blog. In most instances, I've got only one item for each link, but I've added maps and photos to some of them and will add more in due time.

If you like what you see, click on Get Apture at the bottom of one of my boxes. All you have to do is create a free account and follow the steps to put a gadget box on your blog. There's no software to download, so you can use it on any computer once you've made your account. Be sure to watch the tutorial video. You'll be Aptured before you know it.

Blogging on the Fly

Image via Wikipedia

I'm a bad blogger. I admit it. The problem isn't the content of my blog -- generally, I think I write pretty informative and entertaining posts. But all the gurus say that, to develop a loyal readership, you have to present new content on a regular basis, and that is my downfall. A quick look at my archives will reveal the infrequency of my blogging.

But that, dear readers, is about to change. I have bought me some new gear. (Have I mentioned how much I love gadgets?) I've been looking at and reading about the Nokia N810 internet tablet for well over a year, and the price just dropped on my birthday, so I ordered one for my birthday prezzie to self. Here are just some of the features of this pint-sized powerhouse:

• Wifi, with Mozilla browser
• QWERTY keyboard that retracts
  
• Internet radio (with BBC installed!)
  
• Skype installed
• Media player
• Photo viewer
  
• GPS (fee for service)
• Games (including Mahjong solitaire, my fave)
• Slot for memory card for photos and music

I'm thinking this will be great to take along when I travel. No longer will I have to beg or borrow computer use and/or wifi from my host. I'll have access to all my travel research that I keep in Google docs spreadsheets, and I'll be able to blog from anywhere. Now all I need is a new trip or a more exciting life to blog about.

My Wordle

I made this at Wordle.net, but I can't figure out how to make it look bigger on this page. You'll just have to click on it. Wordle makes a graphic representation of the words you use in your blog. It's pretty cool.

Zemanta

Image via WikipediaI've been trying out a new Firefox plug-in called Zemanta. It's a tool that generates suggestions of photos, links, tags(labels) and articles for your blog based on its analysis of the content. As you type, Zemanta looks for suggestions and then presents them to you after every 300 characters (or, you can click to update the suggestions whenever you want). Most of the links come from Wikipedia, with homepage links for some things. It was really buggy when I gave it a test run this past weekend, but they just pushed out an update and things are running much better now. It's in alpha, so bugs and fixes can be expected. I must say that their support people are very responsive, answering questions incredibly quickly even on the weekend.

So, let's give it a whirl and see what suggestions it finds from this list:

Northampton, Massachusetts
Tower of London
Emma Goldman
Rolling Stones

Not bad -- Zemanta found links for all of these, giving me a choice of Wikipedia article or homepage for several. It found five pix of Northampton or Hampshire County, the Firefox logo, and a photo of Charlie Watts. I've added a couple of the suggested articles below; these give more info about how Zemanta works (geekspeak about algorithms and such) and have some screen shots and videos (I like the demo video).

If you're using Blogger, Typepad or WordPress for your blog, and Firefox for your browser, I suggest you try Zemanta and see what you think. Don't be surprised if you have to reload your dashboard page [Ctrl-F5] when you first open a new post, or if you have to turn off ad blocking -- such as AdblockPlus -- for that page in order to make it work. Be patient as they work out the bugs -- it's a great concept, and should improve with age.

Related articles

• Zementa Brings a Semantic Layer to Your Blog [via Zemanta]
• Zemanta, Get Suggestions While Writing Articles [via Zemanta]

I Heart the Internets

How did I ever manage before the internets, especially Web2.0? My social life -- minimal though it still is -- would have been nonexistent. I would have spent hours in the local libraries, or a fortune on books. Instead, all my needs are met while sitting in my study wearing my jammies or slacking off at work. I still think that LiveJournal and MySpace are useless wastes of bandwidth, but I've softened my tone on social networking considerably. Here's what I've been up to lately, particularly stuff related to planning the April trip to the UK:

• Put info about my mini-meetup to volunteer at Southbank Mosaics (see previous post) on Upcoming. I've now got three other Flickr mates who will be joining me, and a couple of maybes.
• While I was noodling around Upcoming, I learned about a Flickr meetup at Borough Market on the Saturday when I'm there. I'm watching that event.
• On Ravelry, I read a while back about a yarn shop called I Knit -- it's the UK’s only yarn store with a licensed bar and late night knitting 5 nights a week. When I first read about the shop, it was located in the uncharted territory of South London somewhere. I just found out that they've recently moved to Lower Marsh Street, Waterloo, which I already have on my itinerary as there are several funky vintage stores there. I need to buy some metric size needles that aren't available in the US.
  
• Used the 24 Hour Museum and London is Free sites to find out about exhibits and other things going on while I'm there.
• Added Londonist and Diamond Geezer to my blogroll on Bloglines. I read them every day to find out about events, restaurants, politics, crime, etc.
  
• Put a seed in the brains of other members of the Guess Where London group on Flickr to schedule an all-GWL pub meet while I'm in town. Someone else in the group has found a venue and the discussion thread is full of people's replies that they're coming (and, sadly, several who will be out of town).
  
• Researched potential destinations for a daytrip with two of my Flickr mates who I met last fall. They're letting me choose where we'll go -- I'm thinking of Kent, to the seaside in Whitstable if it's nice weather or to Canterbury if it's not.
• Listened to podcasts on London Walks and followed the routes on Google Earth or aboutmyplace. I've taken notes on a couple of walks that I might do (Wapping, Islington, Chelsea and Clerkenwell). It would be really dangerous for me to walk around London with my mp3 player plugged into my ears. I already have too much of a tendency to walk into traffic. I also joined the London Walks group on Facebook so I can keep up with new info.
  
• Speaking of maps, I installed the Minimap Sidebar extension for Firefox. It's really useful because it lets you open a sidebar to find a location in Google Maps without leaving the webpage you're on.
  
• Started a Flickr group for London Reflections. I'll try to concentrate on taking reflection shots for the pool, along with all the hundreds of other photo ops that are out there.
• Used Google Documents for my spreadsheet of all the places I want to go, sorted by day to make an itinerary, with address, URL, nearest tube station or bus route, hours and other info.
  
• Imported my events from Upcoming into my Google Calendar.
• Used Google Notebook to clip things I found on the web for future reference.
• Checked rail schedules and fares on the National Rail website.
  

One disappointment is that Transport for London won't let you top up your Oyster card from outside the UK. It would be so much easier if I could transfer money to my card before I leave home. I've used the Journey Planner a lot, however.

If any of my three or four faithful readers finds this stuff useful, please friend me on whatever social networking sites we both use. I need all the friends I can get.